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Mike Allen: Clinton's first test

Hillary Clinton's Top 5 Lighter Moments as Secretary as State

In fact, McAuliffe and some of his top allies have suggested to big donors and consultants that supporting his campaign is a way to get in on the ground floor of Hillary 2016, several donors and operatives told POLITICO.

He’s stocked his campaign with top-tier talent likely to be involved in any Hillary Clinton presidential effort, including campaign manager Robby Mook, senior adviser Patrick Hallahan and bundlers such as Jonathan Mantz and Jackson Dunn.

And McAuliffe raised nearly $2 million in March alone at a half-dozen out-of-state fundraisers featuring former President Bill Clinton or other Clinton insiders including James Carville, Harold Ickes and Dee Dee Myers, according to figures provided by bundlers.

The success or failure of McAuliffe’s campaign is a chance to measure Clinton’s strength and organization in a critical state that now rivals Ohio as the pivotal swing state for winning a presidential election.

McAuliffe’s campaign and most of its surrogates have officially discouraged the perception that he’s running a Hillary Clinton farm team, while some Clinton insiders privately bristle at suggestions by McAuliffe’s allies that his campaign will pave the way for her potential run.

It’s also unclear whether Clinton has privately endorsed the McAuliffe team’s fundraising pitches; thus far, she’s left the campaigning and fundraising to her husband.

Talk of 2016 could also muddle McAuliffe’s message in his tight race against Republican state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. McAuliffe has sought to portray himself as a moderate Virginia businessman, rather than the legendary Washington money man who co-chaired Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign, chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2008 effort, ran the Democratic National Committee in the early 2000s and mentored a generation of Democratic fundraisers.

“I don’t know how to break this to you, but Terry and the Clintons are very, very close. It’s not a secret,” said James Carville, the longtime political strategist and Clinton loyalist, when asked whether McAuliffe was using his entree into Clinton World to build his campaign.

Carville — who last month hosted a lunch at his New Orleans home for McAuliffe with Bill Clinton that he said raised as much as $250,000 — said he hadn’t heard McAuliffe or his team pitch his campaign as a Clinton effort-in-waiting, and stressed that McAuliffe has his own political base.

“He was very close to the president and very close to the first lady and, in the world I live in, he’s got a lot of friends,” Carville said.

Another McAuliffe fundraiser in Georgetown last month raised $170,000 from a group of longtime allies and protégés that looked a lot like a Clinton kitchen cabinet-in-waiting.

Held at the Washington home of Ickes, a top strategist on her 2008 campaign, it was co-hosted by his lobbying partner and fellow Clinton White House veteran Janice Enright, former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and his lobbying partners, as well as Mantz, and Clinton loyalists Rep. Doris Matsui, Steve Elmendorf and Kiki and Joe McLean.